Sunday, March 17, 2013

The paradox of our time in history is that we have, taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less: we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgement; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We love too seldom and hate too often. We have learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life but not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less. We plan more, accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationship.

There are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are the days of two incomes, but more diverce; of fancier houses, but broken homes.

These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill.

1.Take your hobbies seriously.
Whatever they are, enter into them wholeheartedly.Become an expert.The best way to refresh your mind, to give it
a new cutting edge, is to work hard at your hobbies.

2.Make your will the master of your body
in small things and when you want something big it will not be difficuult for
you to get it.

3.Always be ready to learn.However knowledgeable and experienced you may
be, you can still learn something new.

4.Keep your senses sharp and your
mind awake for the message they send you.Become aware of change and development.Sometimes small innovations evolve into important future development.

5.Learn a new skill.You might connect this with your main hobby
or with your work.The mind and the body
are one.To master a physical skill you
need to develop a disciplined, lively mind to direct your hands and feet the way they should go.

6.Use your imagination. Try to
work and things on your own.Try to
invest the machine in your mind.Then
seek out the facts to check your imagination.

7.Be observant.Notice what is going on both in your world and
in the world of great events.Use all
your five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell & taste, to acquire more
knowledge of your surroundings.

8.An alert, attentive mind gives you the
means of improving yourself, for it demonstrates your intelligence and
enables you to see and grasp opportunities that a less lively mind would not
spot.

10.Learn to face fight the hard experiences;
Physically or mentally, or both.

11.What is holding you back?If you
have a “Grasshopper Mind” you know that this is true.And you know why it is true.Even the blazing sun can’t burn a hole in a
piece of tissue-paper unless its rays are focussed and concentrated on one
spot.

12.Follow complete programme
conscientiously for a few months, and you will develop a new mental
freshness, giving you the ability to make full use of your powers.

(The above
hints on “Manage Time – Achieve
Goals” were part of theme for the Executive Diary 2012 published by one
of the Standard Brands as Annual Publication)

Saturday, March 16, 2013

In Corporate as well as employer-employee relations, the activity of reckoning the performance levels for various levels and grades of employees and finalise the Performance Appraisals which will decide the annual/periodical increments and arrive eligibility in deciding further promotions in the Orgisations. While employers will generally take care and give weightage to real performers but in most of the cases it will not be so due to various factors like maintenance of relations with higher officials, colleagues and peers and other supporting staff down the lane in the organisation. There is also a system of showing the performance appraisal recorded by the appraisee to the employee concerned and obtain the feedback for ultimate use in the corporate environment for further aspects.

In most of the organisations, people will wait anxiously for 31 March for the purpose. While unreasonable as well as too much anxiety on the ultimate status of Performance Appraisal, one should keep in mind that the real and hardwork done by the person will pay the dividends in addition to the good performance appraisal as well as the report though it is called confidential one.

While different methods are adopted in various types of organisations in regard to the practice and adoption of Performance Appraisal Systems, the system should help in maintaining good and healthy relations among the employer-employee levels.

While the system will take itself, sometimes bosses may record the typical Confidential Reports which will both show good as well as bad performers in a single format and also exhibiting opportunism.

Here is a typical format and model of CONFIDENTIAL REPORT recorded by a PECULIAR BOSS and also given instructions as to how to read the report and come to real conclusions. Please follow the same ...

Mr.Natwarlal was present when I was writing the report mailed you today. Kindly read only the Alternate lines - 1,3,5, etc. for my True Assessment of him.

Regards

Branch Manager

1 April 1985.

SO FRIENDS! TAKE CARE OF YOUR PERFORMANCE REPORTS. AT THE SAME TIME, PL DO NOT TAKE TOO MUCH CARE AS IT WILL HAVE NEGATIVE EFFECT. YOUR REAL PERFORMANCE SHOULD DECIDE THE LEVEL OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL AND CONFIDENTIAL REPORT ALSO.

Hockey lovers in the country are in for a rude shock as a
reply to a RTI query has disclosed that India has no national game, contrary to
popular perception.

Previously,
hockey was believed to be the national game.

The query was filed by a class-VII student, Aishwarya Parashar. An earlier
query by the girl had revealed that the government does not have any specific
document to prove whether Mahatma Gandhi was conferred the “Father of the
nation” title.

Aishwarya had sought information on a government order pertaining to India’s
national game. She had filed a RTI query with the information officer at the
Prime Minister’s Office in May this year.

She had also requested information on India’s national bird, national anthem,
national symbol, national flower and national animal. While she received
information about the national anthem and national symbol, rest of the queries
were referred to the ministries concerned.

The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, in its reply a few days back, said
the ministry has not declared any sport the national game. The information was
sent to Aishwarya by the additional secretary in the Sports Ministry, Shiv
Pratap Singh. She is yet to get the replies to other queries.

“It is a bitter truth that the country has no national game,” she told Deccan
Herald here.

Aishwarya gained prominence after she used the RTI successfully for the benefit
of the people. Earlier, she used the tool to get a garbage dump in front of her
school shifted and a library constructed there.

ON LEARNINGlearning is finding out what you already knowdoing is demonstrating that you know itteaching is reminding others that they know it just as well as you doyou are all learners, doers, teachers.- Richard Bach

Richard David Bach (born June 23, 1936) is an American writer. He is widely known as the author of the hugely popular 1970s best-sellers Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, among others. Bach's books espouse his philosophy that our apparent physical limits and mortality are merely appearance. He claims to be a direct descendant of Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach is noted for his love of flying and for his books related to air flight and flying in a metaphorical context. He has pursued flying as a hobby since the age of 17. In late August 2012 Bach was badly injured when on approach to landing at Friday Harbor his aircraft clipped some power lines and crashed.

Monday, March 4, 2013

In the worst of time, there is the possibility of seeing hope... We can say "I can be a rainbow in the cloud for someone yet to be." That may be our calling. ~ Maya Angelou

Rainbows are phenomena of light, its perception by the physical senses and the conceptual mind which produces the appearance of a spectral band of colors, often apparently high in the sky, but also at times in close proximity to the observer. The spectrum of colors produced is also itself referred to as the rainbow, and is associated with similar optical phenomena, such as halos, glories, and iridescence. It is widely used symbolically in ways denoting harmoniousunity of purpose amidst diversity by various ethnic, religious and other social groups, and as a sign of a divine covenant, being, or a mystical or magical bridge between mortal and immortal realms in various cultures.

There's a rainbow round my shoulder
And a sky of blue above,
Oh the sun shines bright, the world's all right
'Cause I'm in love. ~ Dave Dreyer

And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

Look, look, look to the rainbow
Follow it over the hill and stream... ~ Yip Harburg

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true. ~ Yip Harburg

It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow — Hope shining upon the tears of grief. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

We could not keep in mind that it was celestial fire we were looking at, — fire cool as the water-drops out of which it was born, and on which it reclined. ~ Thomas Starr King

What is the rainbow? Sunlight turned back to our eye, through drops of falling rain. What sign could be more simple? And yet what sign could be more perfect? ~ Charles Kingsley

She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven. ~ D. H. Lawrence

Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty ~ Navajo song

I will make company with creators, with harvesters, with rejoicers; I will show them the rainbow and the stairway to the Superman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A Rainbow of Promise now shines on the world,
And the universe thrills at the sight. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

God put the rainbow in the clouds, not just in the sky... It is wise to realize we already have rainbows in our clouds, or we wouldn't be here. If the rainbow is in the clouds, then in the worst of time, there is the possibility of seeing hope... We can say "I can be a rainbow in the cloud for someone yet to be." That may be our calling.

Caustics are the brightest places in an optical field. They are the singularities of geometrical optics. The most familiar caustic is the rainbow, a grossly distorted image of the Sun in the form of a giant arc in the skyspace of directions, formed by the angular focusing of sunlight that has been twice refracted and once reflected in raindrops.

And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

Some day I'll wish upon a starAnd wake up where the clouds are far behind meWhere troubles melt like lemondropsAway above the chimney tops,That's where you'll find me.Somewhere over the rainbowBluebirds fly.Birds fly over the rainbow,Why then, oh why can't I?

The idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow — Hope shining upon the tears of grief.

We could not keep in mind that it was celestial fire we were looking at, — fire cool as the water-drops out of which it was born, and on which it reclined. It lay apparently upon the trees, diffused itself among them, from the valley to the crown of the ridge, as gently as the glory in the bush upon Horeb, when "the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed."It seemed like nothing less than a message to mortals from the internal sphere, — the robe of an angel, awful and gentle, come to bear a great truth to the dwellers in the valley. And it was, no doubt. It meant all that the discerning eye and reverent mind felt it to mean. That Arabian bush would have been vital with no such presence, perhaps, to the gaze of a different soul.

Consider now the token of the covenant which God gave to Noah. It was the rainbow. What is the rainbow? Sunlight turned back to our eye, through drops of falling rain. What sign could be more simple? And yet what sign could be more perfect? Noah's sons would fear that another flood was coming, perhaps flood after flood. The token of the rainbow said to them. No. Floods and rain are not to be the custom of this earth. Sunshine is to be the custom of it. Do not fear the clouds and storm and rain; look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still. That up above, beyond the cloud, is still sunlight, and warmth, and cloudless blue sky. Believe in God's covenant. Believe that the sun will conquer the clouds, warmth will conquer cold, calm will conquer storm, fair will conquer foul, light will conquer darkness, joy will conquer sorrow, life conquer death, love conquer destruction and the devouring floods; because God is light, God is love, God is life, God is peace and joy eternal and without change, and labours to give life, and joy, and peace, to man and beast and all created things. This was the meaning of the rainbow. Not a sudden or strange token, a miracle, as men call it, like as some voice out of the sky, or fiery comet, might have been; but a regular, orderly, and natural sign, to witness that God is a God of order. Whenever there was a rainy day there might be a rainbow. It came by the same laws by which everything else comes in the world. It was a witness that God who made the world is the friend and preserver of man; that His promises are like the everlasting sunshine which is above the clouds, without spot or fading, without variableness or shadow of turning.

She was sick with nausea so deep that she perished as she sat. And then, in the blowing clouds, she saw a band of faint iridescence colouring in faint colours a portion of the hill. And forgetting, startled, she looked for the hovering colour and saw a rainbow forming itself. In one place it gleamed fiercely, and, her heart anguished with hope, she sought the shadow of iris where the bow should be. Steadily the colour gathered, mysteriously, from nowhere, it took presence upon itself, there was a faint, vast rainbow. The arc bended and strengthened itself till it arched indomitable, making great architecture of light and colour and the space of heaven, its pedestals luminous in the corruption of new houses on the lowhill, its arch the top of heaven. And the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face of the world's corruption were living still, that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration, that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.

If you mean that the proximity of one color should give beauty to another that terminates near it, observe the rays of the sun in the composition of the rainbow, the colors of which are generated by the falling rain, when each drop in its descent takes every color of the bow.

An argument can be legitimately sustained only if the participants are speaking about the same level. Argumentation would — for the most part — be replaced with something akin to Niels Bohr's principle of complementarity. Information from and about the different vibratory levels of bands of consciousness — although superficially as different as X-Rays and radio waves — would be integrated and synthesized into one spectrum, one rainbow. ... Each band or level, being a particular manifestation of the spectrum, is what it is only by virtue of the other bands. The color blue is no less beautiful because it exists along side the other colors of a rainbow, and "blueness" itself depends upon the existence of the other colors, for if there were no color but blue, we would never be able to see it. In this type of synthesis, no approach, be it Eastern or Western, has anything to lose — rather, they all gain a universal context.

Why are there so many songs about rainbowsAnd what's on the other side?Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,And rainbows have nothing to hide.So we've been told and some choose to believe itI know they're wrong, wait and see.Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,The lovers, the dreamers and me.

O beautiful rainbow;—all woven of light!There's not in thy tissue one shadow of night;Heaven surely is open when thou dost appear,And, bending above thee, the angels draw near,And sing,—"The rainbow! the rainbow!The smile of God is here."

Bright pledge of peace and sunshine! the sure tieOf thy Lord's hand, the object of His eye!When I behold thee, though my light be dim,Distinct, and low, I can in thine see HimWho looks upon thee from His glorious throne,And minds the covenant between all and One.